You Are Dumb, which is not a blog, posts new columns when it can manage to in these troubled Trumpian times. It is also a Twitter feed, @youaredumb, with content in a similar vein but much shorter. For a take on what a blog by me would be like, check out OLDNERD.

Yesterday, we discussed on a larger scale what exactly the fuck was wrong with the Open Source Boob Project, a desperate attempt by Bad Nerds to fuel their titty fetish under the guise of bold social experimentation. The idea was that woman who would like people to come up to them and ask to fondle their boobs would wear a green button, and the woman who didn't want to be asked would wear a red button.

Which, by the way, is just stupid. If you have an idea that's strictly "opt-in", as LiveJournalista TheFerrett claims repeatedly, then you don't need a red button, do you? Like the M&M shopper for a picky rock band, you only need the green ones.

But that's neither here nor there. The fact remains - fat hairy nerd* posts stupid, offensive idea, idea meets with epic-level resistance, nerd is forced to humbly rescind idea. And while the attempt, as I mentioned yesterday, was an honorable one, I would like to point out some aspects of his apology where he STILL gets it wrong. ACTUAL QUOTE TIME!

"And the chances that the Project would get fucked up, making con spaces more amenable to hordes of stalkers and mouthbreathers who will grope and maul women, are pretty damn big. Hell, it’s already made women feel less safe by me mentioning it, and that makes me feel like shit. As it should."

What it hasn't done, that it should, is to make you realize that the sharp distinction you make between good people like you, who only grope, maul, and mouthbreathe in public after getting explicit permission from a woman to do so; and bad people, who take advantage of a set of rules to just grab themselves some titty, is... how can I put this? Barely fucking extant. Bordering on nonexistent. Not to diminish the value of consent, but the mental state, the desire, is essentially identical. The only difference is in what you will do to achieve that desire. It's a lot like those people who say invading Iraq was still a great idea, it was just the execution that was fucked up. But the idea is rotten at the core, and trying to pass that off onto the potential behavior of those less enlightened than you is a cop-out.

"If I’ve contributed to the idea that women are not safe, then I’ve failed with a capital “F,” regardless of the underlying reality. And if people think that all cons are filled with horrific swarms of gropers, well, then I’ve also failed."

Regardless of the underlying reality? The underlying reality is what you failed to regard in the first place! The underlying reality is that you tried to bypass social convention for personal gain. You tried to cut ahead in the titty line, and Handshake, Conversation, Dinner Date, and First Kiss got pissed off and kicked you in the balls. That, as the short green guy said, is why you fail.

"Even as many won’t ever see it as anything but a violation of awful, personal space, not understanding that every person – specifically, the volunteers who asked for buttons – draws a different space. The fact that the women who participated in the project at Penguicon each actively wanted to be a part of it apparently means little, because they’re apparently not qualified to make their own choices about how they want friends and acquaintances to approach them."

Oh, fuck you, nerd-boy. Some People Liked It is not a valid defense. I don't give a shit why the women who chose to participate made the choice that they did, although I've known enough nerdgirls to have a pretty good idea. You did for breasts what fanfic does to intellectual property. You saw someone else's toys, you wanted to play with them, and you found some loophole to convince yourself that it was OK even when it's not.

Forget what happens if it gets out of hand. Because even if your perfect, pure idea were executed perfectly and purely by everyone involved, I'd still have to circumnavigate a crowd of half a dozen nerdmonkeys treating a black pleather corset like the monolith from the start of 2001 just to get to the fucking pretzels and Mr. Pibb. And that is not, I repeat not, fucking acceptable.

"As I said. I think it was worthwhile -for us-, at the cost of potential harm to some bystanders at ConFusion who were asked questions they didn't want to endure. (And that is significant.) Despite the tides of people who hated the idea, there were also tides of people who saw what it could be - which, despite the misinterpretation, is more than just HURR HURR TITS, though apparently I don't have the words to make it clear."

I suppose it's mean of me, after watching someone's self-awareness jump from zero to four in about a week, to be cranky and pissed off that it did not make it to the crucial seven-through-ten range. but Ockham's Razor demands that when thousands and thousands of people simply cannot see your inner nobility, it's probably because you don't have any. You like tits. That's fine. You like them to a degree some might consider unhealthy, but even that's OK. But only if you recognize it.

But you don't recognize it. You still think, in your heart of hearts, that the world would be a better place if every man felt (and felt up) like you did, and every woman realized that since your hooterlust was so pure and noble, that they could safely offer up their dirty pillows for your tactile amusement. But it wouldn't. It would just be better for YOU. And people like you. Which is both a small, small group and a group that will never be small enough. The Bad Nerds.

*Which I state simply as a matter of fact - if he did not want us to know he was fat and hairy, he wouldn't have told us he had man-boobs and used that picture for his LiveJournal avatar.